David Kamerer

Associate Professor of Communication, Loyola University Chicago

Dear Twitter: please charge me $1

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quote.jpg“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” goes the classic New Yorker cartoon.

Or a spammer.
Brandjacking is a growing problem online. On Twitter, both Motrin and Exxon-Mobil have had unknown individuals posing as themselves. And now, one of my favorite thought leaders in social media, Jeremiah Owyang, has been brandjacked. (Twitter has the problem under control).
This will continue because it’s easy, there’s no real penalty if you get caught, and there are lots of jerks out there, running lots of hustles.
So here’s a modest proposal: charge for the service. Like $1 a year. A buck. Seriously.
Why?
It forces each user to provide a real name and real address, which is verified when the charge is run through the credit card companies. That alone would knock down the Twitter spam, which frequently comes from one individual using multiple accounts. A credit card also ensures the holder of the account is of a certain age. When the account renews yearly, it gives people a chance to get off the service. It would give Twitter a much richer database once the service is monetized.
A buck is just a speed bump, enough to slow down the spammers and liars, minimally disrupting legitimate users. It’s a small lever that Twitter can use to protect its network.
And what would Twitter do with the money? It could make a modest donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or some other cause that improves the online experience. 

Just one bad moment

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We’ve all had one. That moment you wish you could take back. Maybe you were impatient with your child, a colleague, or a loved one. Perhaps you laughed at someone’s expense. Or uncorked some profanity in an inappropriate situation.

You know why you did it. You were tired, you had had enough, you weren’t really thinking, you had a few drinks, you were just careless. You thought you were safe.
There’s nothing new about the one bad moment. What’s new is the omnipresence of recording devices and ways to share digital information. So today, your own bad moment can become permanently attached to you. It can go viral. And so, despite a lifetime of almost always doing the right thing, this one bad moment becomes the stain that never goes away.

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Actor Christian Bale exploded on the set of Terminator 4, and his tirade has gone viral. The rant occurred in front of a small audience. But the recording has been shared millions of times. On YouTube, you can hear mashups of the rant with dance music and Dora the Explorer. There are currently about 40 videos featuring the profanity-laced rant. One has more than 2,320,000 page views.
“Christian Bale? Isn’t he that spoiled hothead? Oh, and I think he acted in some movies, too.”
Bale is not alone. Michael Richards had his bad moment. So did Michael Phelps. The pace of these moments seems to be accelerating. A-Rod lies about steroid use. Chris Brown may have assaulted his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna. Squeaky-clean Disney actress/singer Miley Cyrus appears to mock Asians. And that’s just from the past few days!
So please, be careful out there. And more importantly: be good. It is true: your true character is revealed by your behavior when you think no one is watching. 
A more difficult issue that deserves further discussion: forgiveness. As a culture, how can we forgive people that we really don’t know? The viral qualities of a bad moment are far more powerful than those of atonement.

Presidential spokespeople: is there a handbook?

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No wonder reporters don’t like spokespeople! Evasion, redirection, and just plain sucking up to reporters, straight from the playbook of how to be a lousy spokesperson (the good stuff starts at about 3:50 in on the clip).

Blagojevich: you just can’t look away

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Being a liar is probably the worst sin from a public relations perspective. But right next to lying is hubris, the notion that the rules don’t apply to you, that your $#*t don’t stink, that you can get away with something wrong through the sheer force of confidence.
Hubris is alive and well in government and business all across the world. Take a seasoned CEO with lots of power and money, stir in a cadre of “yes men,” and it will grow like bacteria in a petri dish. You’ve probably seen it at some place where you work. If you were lucky, you got out alive.
Occasionally, however, you get a special case, in which there’s a complete disconnect between bending the rules to suit your goals and totally smashing them. Like when 1988 Presidential hopeful Gary Hart, who was suspected of being a womanizer, said to the media, “go ahead, follow me.” (they found him on a yacht named Monkey Business, engaged in … well, monkey business, with a young-woman-not-his-wife, Donna Rice). 
Like when OJ Simpson vowed to spend the rest of his life looking for the “real killer.” Or when John Edwards tried to soften the impact of his infidelity, claiming that his wife’s cancer was in remission at the time.
And who could forget Bill Clinton, saying directly to the camera, “I did not have sex with that woman.”
And now we’ve got Rod Blagojevich, the colorful governor of Illinois, about to stand trial for impeachment. We’ve all heard the tapes of his conspiracy to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, his plans for the op-ed page of the Chicago Tribune, and the cursing. Lots of cursing. That’s a mighty big hole to climb out of. 
But some people just don’t give up. They see insurmountable odds, and to then it’s just like walking across the street. Here’s some of that hubris:
That’s right, he’s comparing himself to Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Now Blago is taking his story to the cable news and TV talk shows, sharing his story of persecution, how the trial is fixed, and tossing off bombs like Oprah Winfrey for Senator. The TV hosts share looks of mock concern, but they’re gleeful to join in this self-made execution. After all, it’s Blago’s words that will hang him, not theirs.
What’s the take-away for a public relations professional? All you can do is watch and wonder. And inoculate yourself – and your clients – from hubris. Remember that your deeds matter more than your words. And that cameras and microphones are everywhere; showing trumps telling.
We see a horrible accident in slow motion. Here’s what Blago sees:

Reputation management tools, free and paid

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There’s only one Internet, and that makes it easier to effectively track your brand’s reputation than ever before. Dan Schwabel takes a look at free tools for online reputation management in this article; this may be all the information you need. But if you’re seeking enterprise-level support, here’s Dan’s rundown on paid tools, too. Alternately, you could hire a pro like Katie Payne. As Katie says, “if you treasure it, you must measure it.”